In an ideal world, it would be an affordable and practical solution for new electrical generation installations in developing nations to be fueled by low-carbon sources, such as solar, wind, and hydropower. Solar seems perfect for nations with lots of sun exposure, and no efficient way of bringing the traditional electric grid to remote locations. However, there are many unexpected challenges with solar electrification that entrepreneurs are learning about while doing business in these developing nations, including installation and maintenance, infrastructure, and financing. Installation and maintenance, in particular, is often underemphasized, but it is just as important as the other challenges that make solar-powered electrification a tricky prospect.

One major hurdle for installing solar panels is the lack of skilled workers to do the job. Customers for solar panel installations could range from hospitals requiring over 20 kilowatts of power to small villages needing less than 500 watts to power the entire village. Some training is necessary to understand the complexities of these systems. This problem is being approached in a few different ways. Some companies are hiring and training dedicated installation crews to travel around vast areas doing the work. The problem with this arrangement, though, is that traveling between job sites is inefficient, and any downtime becomes very costly for companies trying to keep dedicated crews on payroll. On the other hand, if these companies hire independent installation crews then ensuring quality standards is harder to do. Also, companies are at the whim of the rates that the independent crews set. Not to mention, in some areas there are no independent installation crews for hire. However, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is stepping in to help. Recently, in Mali, the UNDP paid for the training of female solar technicians to perform installation, maintenance, and service for their entire village. Not only does this solve one of the difficult problems with solar installations, but the training also provides an economic boost for the entire village. Women are now able to earn a living wage to help further support their families.

Another challenge has to do with how transactions to purchase solar panels are structured. Most solar panel installations are a one-time transaction where a customer pays for the panels, equipment and the installation. The company delivers these products, then either installs the panels themselves or hires independent installers. In these deals, it is often unclear who will pay for maintenance when the solar panels break down. Many companies have little financial capacity to bring repair technicians out to remote locations years later to service panels (aside from reputation and customer satisfaction, which some corporations are not necessarily interested in), since most are struggling to make money as it is. Customers are often not in a position to pay much extra for maintenance either since they already paid a large up-front premium for the installation. Hospitals, schools, and businesses cannot afford to continue pouring money into solar systems that unexpectedly break down after two years, when they were supposed to work for twenty years. But if no one is able or willing to pay for maintenance, the panels go unused and wasted.

Also wasted are the high hopes and expectations of the people who purchased the products. Because solar panels can be a novel technology in remote areas, if one person in a small village has a negative experience with solar, it is likely that others in the village will dismiss it. Entrepreneurs should not rush into high-minded plans of remote rural electrification unless they can ensure a very pleasurable and positive experience, because they might spoil the market for future years. If people are skeptical of solar, then they will continue to fall back on outdated diesel generators, which need just as much maintenance and costly fuel. Not to mention, these generators perpetuate adverse climate effects by pouring CO2 into the atmosphere. For these reasons it is especially important for like-minded entrepreneurs to share successful strategies and business models to tackle the problem of remote rural electrification and maintenance.

Currently there are some success stories in the field such as Devergy, and Bboxx that have done a commendable job addressing installation and maintenance issues. Devergy operates by training dedicated workers to service a village-wide micro-grid consisting of a few solar panels. Most entire village installations are not more than one kilowatt. Devergy installs smart meters and the villagers pay for their usage via mobile money. They essentially operate like a modern utility company.

Another wonderful company, Bboxx, uses extensive tracking and monitoring on all of their products to ensure safe delivery and operation for years. These companies show that despite the financial and logistical challenges, it is possible to build installation and maintenance into a successful business model. Bboxx, like other successful companies, provide ample training to locals so that the community can be involved. With better means of sharing best practices and effective models, hopefully future solar companies operating in the developing world can avoid prior mistakes and more efficiently extend access to power to the people they are serving.

As part of the “United Nations Sustainable Energy For All” practicioner network, I had the opportunity to hear about these little known issues straight from the entrepreneur’s who are actively dealing with solar electricfication in developing nations at a recent UN SE4ALL & Power Africa event in New York City.

…”then they will continue to fall back on outdated diesel generators, which need just as much maintenance…”Uh,, our diesel genny, a fairly robust and common Mitsubishi water-cooled 3-cyl, has required almost infinitely more maintenance and knowledge than our PV system. No comparison. In almost 20 years, our off-grid PV system has needed virtually no maintenance beyond an occasional cleaning; like washing windows. Batteries? Periodic check, washing and watering. My 10 year old grandson could do any of these things with a few minutes of instruction. Gosh, our woodstove requires far more maintenance than our PV system. Other off-grid systems I’ve installed report the same success. In 17 years, I’ve gotten three maintenance related calls that I can think of. One was a failed breaker, two were due to debris on the panels. I’ve gotten more calls from folks wanting to expand their system as prices fall.Barring some sort of failure, usually easily identified and quite rare in my experience, PV is about the most maintenance-free energy source I know of.As for technical know-how, anyone who can do basic automotive DC electrical work (replace batteries, alternators, troubleshoot lights, fuses) can easily grok PV systems. I’m betting any reasonably proficient village mechanic would be a fine PV tech. In my experience, most solar instructors make PV too complex; more complex than it needs to be.Keep those batteries charged and happy!

Thank you very much for the comment! I didn’t want to lay into diesel generators too badly, but you’re certainly right they are a hassle to deal with, and super noisey too. Not very pleasant all around. It seems like PV is far more advantageous now especially with the efficacy of the current systems being produced. This awareness needs to be spread so that outdated cultural beliefs of diesel generator superiority do not continue.As you mentioned, once understood, the PV systems are easy to handle. However, if there is no training provided (even as simple as telling customers to regularly wash them) then the mainentence may go undone. I would love to see a program created dedicated to the awareness and knowledge of PV systems in developing nations, in a way which keeps the systems simple to understand, not needlessly complex as you suggest most instructors make it!Thanks again and cheers!

Hello Ghung, I can sympathize with you on generator issues. Some questions come to mind.1. In an average year how many kWhr’s are generated by the PV system and how many by the generator?2. How do you value the dispatchable kWhr’s of the generator vs. the undispatchable PV kWhr’s? 3. If dispatchability is of little value why not get rid of the ginney and go without during long periods of reduced sun?4. If PV is superior why not add enough batteries ( one week to 3 months depending on climate) to make PV stand alone reliable and dispatchable? In a modern industrial society with traffic lights, factories, hospitals, high rise buildings, refrigeration etc. reliable dispatchable kWhr’s are worth much more than unreliable kWhr’s, but most wind/PV supporters treat all kWhr’s as if they are equivalent and of equal value.

TheGhung Fu, your description reminds me of the ancient fable Stone Soup, where a PV array is the stone and the diesel generator and woodstove are the soup bone, the vegetables, the butter, and the salt and pepper.Enough stones and we could eat forever, couldn’t we?

“…small villages needing less than 500 watts to power the entire village.”A few Watts per person can make people more comfortable in their poverty (by charging cell phones, flashlights, and electronic games), but it can’t eliminate their poverty. Communities are lifted out of poverty by improving their labor productivity using motorized equipment, power tools, and modern factories.In this presentation by Dartmouth university’s Robert Hargraves, Aim High, data is presented suggesting that people need 2000-4000 kWh annually per person to cross above the poverty line. That’s 230-460 Watts average per person, several times lower than Americans use. Dr. Hargraves also explains how Thorium can be the energy source to provide this energy. This related story on TEC describes the success story of an Indian village which started with a small solar power system, and was then able to move up to real grid power. Ironically, the Greenpeace team that helped with the solar system considered the outcome to be a failure, as they were hoping the solar system and spartan energy budget would eliminate the need for a grid supplying plentiful cheap energy.

Hi Nathan! Thanks for you comment! I certainly didn’t mean that 500 watts of power will eliminate the condition of poverty from these developing villages. But as you mentioned, this amount of power is for the basic necessities of charging phones, small lights, small cooking systems etc. This is certainly a first step towards modernization in areas where no such technology was possible before these power systems.Thanks for linking this story as well. It’s interesting to see that the village was successfully powered with their 100kW system before the traditional grid came online. Although the Greenpeace team saw it as a failure, it provides a good example of what is possible for parts of the world where traditional grid access is completely impossible.Cheers!

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TheGhung Fu

December 24, 2014 22:06

Nathan: Having a bit of a problem making sense of at least parts of your comment. First of all, confusing watts with watt hours always sends up a red flag. Secondly, how does solar power evolve into grid power? Grid operators don’t suddenly decide to bring in the grid because someone installed a solar system in some remote village. If the “230-460 Watts average per person” you refer to actually means watt hours, this could easily be supplied by a single 100 watt panel per (working?) person in a generally sunny location like India. At today’s prices, that would be far less expensive than building out, maintaining, and paying for grid power, especially over time.Further, there seems to be no corelation with the village solar system and the eventual grid buildout. Any suggestion that the two are somehow related may be misleading. Although the village now has subsidized grid power, they also are dependent on a notoriously unreliable grid system that is reliant upon subsidies and largely coal-sourced energy; not what India or the world needs. Will these folks also have an electric bill they wouldn’t have had otherwise? Is this simply a case of industrial age thinking that “more is always better”? Perhaps it’s actually a case of the village using the grid as their battery (grid-tied) in which case there may be an advantage, but it also sort of blows this whole case wide apart. Perhaps the grid wanted their PV power more than the village wanted grid power.The energy collective link from your comment cites 2012 solar prices from sub-Saharan Africa. Really?! May as well compare the price of gasoline in the US to prices in the EU. India is a major producer of PV panels and related equipment, and my sources there tell me prices are quite low. The costs of PV-sourced electricity there are at, or approaching, parity with their subsidized electricity, as they are in other parts of the world, especially considering full-cycle environmental costs over time. Another red flag goes up.I’ll go on to say that theft and corruption in the electrical sector is rampant in India. Owning the means of production and distribution locally virtually eliminates this issue. If the town has local control of it’s energy source, it’s a powerful and empowering thing. It’s clear that some (mainly all of the intermediaries who profit but produce little of value) consider this local empowerment to be a threat. This article falls into that meme, IMO.One of the main benefits of having even small amounts of electricity is lighting; extending the work day and allowing for reading and study (education) without relying on sunlight. This takes very little electricity. Other uses tend to be intermittant, and thier accumulated consumption isn’t high when common sense is used. My family has adapted to a much lower level of energy use with little change in lifestyle; just a bit of smarts. Shouldn’t be a problem for those on the way up.It comes down to who controls the means of production; those doing the producing, or some bureaucrat in Mumbai.

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vestias

December 25, 2014 11:51

Renewables and supporting the development of the unfortunate communities of the world will be a frist step on the rights track to create stable communities

On Watts versus, Watt-hours, I wrote what I meant: 2000 kWh/(24 hours per day)/(365 day)=228 Watts. This is the amount of reliable, dispatchable power required to bring people out of poverty by allowing modern economic development. I have not seen any reports that a few Watts of power when the sun is shining can reduce poverty (in fact, how can communities which lack a modern economy even afford cell phones?).Regarding grid build-out, the village solar system discussed in the article I linked was described as a micro-grid. I understood that to mean that distribution lines were strung from the solar plant to homes and businesses. This is a big part of the cost of a full connection to a centralized grid, since the trunk lines that would connect the village micro-grid to a regional grid would be shared by all users in the village. This cost sharing is one reason it makes sense to extend the grid to villages that already have a micro-grid installed. The other factor is that once electricity is available, it takes time to build market penetration; the larger the market grows, the greater the savings from switching from distributed solar to centralized grid power.Also, the solar power in the village was not given away free, but was apparently being sold for a price that was higher than that from the coal-powered grid (even at today’s PV pricing, if battery and generator backup is provided, the cost is way higher than coal fired generation). If each home had their own solar panel, that would presumably help with electricity theft, but it would also make it harder and more expensive to add a backup generator. Without a backup generator, solar power is not reliable; unreliablility is a major complaint about the Indian grid, thus should not be designed into new deployments.”One of the main benefits of having even small amounts of electricity is lighting;…This takes very little electricity.”I quoted the figure of 2000-4000 kWh annually per person because I don’t believe that providing smaller amounts of electricity is a compelling goal. The idea that people in poor countries don’t need grids if they have a few Watts solar panel is often repeated by enthusiasts, but I have not seen any real-world data to support this.

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TheGhung Fu

December 26, 2014 21:49

Bill; glad to answer your questions:1. In an average year how many kWhr’s are generated by the PV system and how many by the generator?Since Jan 1st, 2014 our generator has produced 219 kWh (42.9 run-time hours, about 50 gallons diesel) and the PV system has produced 3813 kWh gross. Net consumption from the inverters was 3277 (about 14% loss, PV=>batteries=>inverter efficiency). We also have some DC-direct loads (this computer for example). 2. How do you value the dispatchable kWhr’s of the generator vs. the undispatchable PV kWhr’s?Since the PV kWh are (estimated) 95% dispatchable (we rarely need to run the generator because we are running out of power) we value those most since the generator requires ongoing inputs, is noisy and polluting.3. If dispatchability is of little value why not get rid of the ginney and go without during long periods of reduced sun?Because (perhaps revealing your lack of knowledge regarding battery-based off-grid systems) batteries last much longer if they receive a full ‘hard’ charge periodically, referred to as “equalization” of cells. While our PV system frequently brings the batteries to this full state-of-charge, during periods of cloudiness we will occasionally do a full generator charge (equalization) to prevent a very deep discharge of the battery set. This doesn’t mean we would have run out of usable power during that period. Indeed, with our 52 kWh battery and with reasonable mangement, we can go several days without charging the batteries.Days when the PV arrays produce little or no power are rare. It’s a misconception that PV doesn’t produce any power on cloudy days. Some days are better than others. Good management generally means not running things like the dishwasher on those days. We’re in the habit of getting things done (like laundry) on those better days when there’s surplus power , which also dumps to the hot water system once the batteries are charged. Much of this is automated via the charge controllers. I suppose it’s a bother to some folks to have to manage their energy use at all, but it’s not something we have to work hard at; more intuitive. Your local electrical provider spends a lot of time and energy on TOU management, even if you don’t see it (been there, done that).4. If PV is superior why not add enough batteries ( one week to 3 months depending on climate) to make PV stand alone reliable and dispatchable?As early adopters, our system has been adapted to our needs with time. The current battery set meets our needs and then some (eight years and counting); we found the sweet spot . The modular nature of PV has allowed us to expand to the point where we live quite well. Note that the home has a lot of passive heating/cooling features, is quite efficient, and that our hot water is solar-sourced as well. These are loads that need little or no electricity. Solar (independent system) also pumps our household water; another system pumps water for livestock and garden. Gets addictive, this solar stuff.Again, you imply that our PV system is neither ‘reliable nor dispatchable’. I assure you this isn’t the case. Our systems are both, or my wife would have left me long ago. Our electrical service has been infinitely more reliable than my sister’s, down the road. We never lose power; she does a couple of times a year. She’s also had electrical damage from grid surges, something we’ve never had from our ‘micro-grid’.We get 65+ inhces of rain here (this ain’t Arizona), and some folks may think it’s a neat trick to live well off-grid in our climate. It’s merely a matter of adapting the technology, with a bit of adapting of our own. A lot of people have bothered themselves with trying to poke holes in our plan in the last two decades. Most are now believers; others just shut up since success speaks for itself.BTW: We aren’t wealthy, nor have we spent all of our money pursuing this dream. My neighbor spent/spends more on his boat. Different priorities, it seems. I just wish he would quit dumping his mercury and chromium in my stream; his carbon and sulphur in my air. You said; “…but most wind/PV supporters treat all kWhr’s as if they are equivalent and of equal value.”Maybe when societies start paying the full costs of their energy use, those folks will feel differently. The “dispatchable” kWh you prize so highly have many unaccounted-for costs that all of us will pay for eventually, even if some derive no benefit. One of us, at least, has chosen to not ignore that reality. Not sure if the perfect energy source exists, but some are less imperfect than others, all things considered.

Hi Bill, thanks for commenting and continuing the discussion!There’s absolutely no way that we could completely stop the use of fossil fuels or tradtional sources of electrification in an instant. But I think we should be actively moving towards reducing our use of those traditional sources. For instance, you mention the use of batteries to support PV systems to potentially make them reliable enough as the only source of energy generation. Instead of pouring money into oil exploration and the like, we could be focusing that capital towards developing large cheap reliable high quality batteries. There should be many of Musk’s giga-factories in production rather than just one. Although batteries pose a different environmental risk, it’s certainly less pressing than hitting the atmospheric CO2 capacity.Not to answer for Ghung; but in some cases PV systems can be just as dispatchable as diesel generators. Especially in remote locations where transportation of diesel fuel is unreliable and just as intermitten as sun exposure. That being said, in most cases diesel generators reign supreme in dispatchable emergency energy generation. However, in non-emergent situations, we should be focusing on more sustainable sources for energy generation. In the case of this article, the electrification of remote developing locations across the globe where reliable power has never been before.

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TheGhung Fu

December 26, 2014 22:06

Adam said: “However, if there is no training provided (even as simple as telling customers to regularly wash them) then the mainentence may go undone.”That is a problem of implementation; not with the technology. A lot of folks crash cars, but that usually isn’t the car’s fault. My sister eventually got tired of walking and riding transit, so she decided to learn to drive better, and pay attention while doing so. Once these folks learn that it’s in their best interest to operate and maintain these systems properly, they’ll seek out the knowledge they need; “Solar Living For Dummies” or something. These solar projects aren’t the only projects that may have ‘failed’ because someone dropped the ball; far from it.